Passer-by

It's only fair to warn you, right at the start, that this is a story

with no ending. But it has a definite beginning, for it was while we

were both students at Astrotech that I met Julie. She was in her final

year of solar physics when I was graduating, and during our last year

at college we saw a good deal of each other. I've still got the woolen

tamo'shanter she knitted so that I wouldn't bump my head against my

space helmet. (No, I never had the nerve to wear it.)

Unfortunately, when I was assigned to Satellite Two Julie went to the

Solar Observatory at the same distance from Earth, but a couple of

degrees eastward along the orbit. So there we were, sitting twenty-two

thousand miles above the middle of Africa but with nine hundred miles

of empty, hostile space between us.

At first we were both so busy that the pang of separation was somewhat

lessened. But when the novelty of life in space had worn off, our

thoughts began to bridge the gulf that divided us. And not only our

thoughts, for I'd made friends with the communications people, and we

used to have little chats over the intersection TV circuit. In some

ways it made matters worse seeing each other face to face and never

knowing just how many other people were looking in at the same time.

There's not much privacy in a space station.... Sometimes I'd focus one

of our telescopes onto the distant, brilliant star of the observatory.

In the crystal clarity of space, I could use enormous magnifications,

and could see every detail of our neighbors' equipment the solar

telescopes, the pressurised spheres of the living quarters that housed

the staff, the slim pencils of visiting ferry rockets that had climbed

up from Earth. Very often there would be space-suited figures moving

among the maze of apparatus, and I would strain my eyes in a hopeless

attempt at identification. It's hard enough to recognize anyone in a

space suit when you're only a few feet apart but that didn't stop me

from trying.

We'd resigned ourselves to waiting, with what patience we could muster,

until our Earth leave was due in six months' time, when we had an

unexpected stroke of luck. Less than half our tour of duty had passed

when the head of the transport section suddenly announced that he was

going outside with a butterfly net to catch meteors. He didn't become

violent, but had to be shipped hastily back to Earth. I took over his

job on a temporary basis and now had in theory at least the freedom of

space.

There were ten of the little low-powered rocket scooters under my proud

command, as well as four of the larger inter station shuttles used to

ferry stores and personnel from orbit to orbit. I couldn't hope to

borrow one of those, but after several weeks of careful organising I

was able to carry out the plan I'd conceived some two microseconds

after being told I was now head of transport.

There's no need to tell how I juggled duty lists, cooked logs and fuel

registers, and persuaded my colleagues to cover up for me. All that

matters is that, about once a week, I would climb into my personal

space suit, strap myself to the spidery framework of a Mark III

Scooter, and drift away from the station at minimum power. When I was

well clear, I'd go over to full throttle, and the tiny rocket motor

would hustle me across the nine-hundred-mile gap to the observatory.

The trip took about thirty minutes, and the navigational requirements

were elementary. I could see where I was going and where I'd come

from, yet I don't mind admitting that I often felt well, a trifle

lonely around the mid-point of the journey. There was no other solid

matter within almost five hundred miles and it looked an awfully long

way down to Earth. It was a great help, at such moments, to tune the

suit radio to the general service band, and to listen to all the

back-chat between ships and stations.

At mid-flight I'd have to spin the scooter around and start braking,

and ten minutes later the observatory would be close enough for its

details to be visible to the unaided eye. Very shortly after that I'd

drift up to a small, plastic pressure bubble that was in the process of

being fitted out as a spectroscopic laboratory and there would be

Julie, waiting on the other side of the air lock.... I won't pretend

that we confined our discussions to the latest results in astrophysics,

or the progress of the satellite construction schedule. Few things,

indeed, were further from our thoughts; and the journey home always

seemed to flash by at a quite astonishing speed.

It was around mid-orbit on one of those homeward trips that the radar

started to flash on my little control panel. There was something large

at extreme range, and it was coming in fast. A meteor, I told myself

maybe even a small asteroid. Anything giving such a signal should be

visible to the eye: I read off the bearings and searched the star

fields in the indicated direction.

The thought of a collision never even crossed my mind; space is so

inconceivably vast that I was thousands of times safer than a man

crossing a busy street on Earth.

There it was a bright and steadily growing star near the foot of Orion.

It already outshone Rigel, and seconds later it was not merely a star,

but had begun to show a visible disk. Now it was moving as fast as I

could turn my head; it grew to a tiny, misshaped moon, then dwindled

and shrank with the same silent, inexorable speed.

I suppose I had a clear view of it for perhaps half a second, and that

half-second has haunted me all my life. The object had already

vanished by the time I thought of checking the radar again, so I had no

way of gauging how close it came, and hence how large it really was. It

could have been a small object a hundred feet away or a very large one,

ten miles off. There is no sense of perspective in space, and unless

you know what you are looking at, you cannot judge its distance.

Of course, it could have been a very large and oddly shaped meteor; I

can never be sure that my eyes, straining to grasp the details of so

swiftly moving an object, were not hopelessly deceived. I may have

imagined that I saw that broken, crumpled prow, and the cluster of dark

ports like the sightless sockets of a skull. Of one thing only was I

certain, even in that brief and fragmentary vision. If it was a ship,

it was not one of ours. Its shape was utterly alien, and it was very,

very old.

It may be that the greatest discovery of all time slipped from my grasp

as I struggled with my thoughts midway between the two space

stations.

But I had no measurements of speed or direction;

whatever it was that I had glimpsed was now lost beyond recapture in

the wastes of the solar system.

What should I have done? No one would ever have believed me, for I

would have had no proof.

Had I made a report, there would have been endless trouble. I should

have become the laughingstock of the Space Service, would have been

reprimanded for misuse of equipment and would certainly not have been

able to see Julie again. And to me, at that age, nothing else was as

important. If you've been in love yourself, you'll understand; if not,

then no explanation is any use.

So I said nothing. To some other man (how many centuries hence?) will

go the fame for proving that we were not the first-born of the children

of the sun. Whatever it may be that is circling out there on its

eternal orbit can wait, as it has waited ages already.

Yet I sometimes wonder. Would I have made a report,

after all had I known that Julie was going to marry someone else?